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Comment by lanrh1836 | Hacker News Reader

Can someone explain why Beijing is so expensive as far as rents go? I’m surprised given how sprawling it is.

Imagine a city with so much housing demand that there are literal laws about who can and cannot move there for the sake of population control

Also, a lot of the people in the bunkers are not supposed to be there in the legal sense above, which is why they end up there.

The Hukou (户口) system that you’re talking about wasn’t established because of demand for housing in Beijing. It’s not really clear why it was established and has origins that date back hundreds of years. It essentially serves as a social control mechanism and to promote people living, and thus laboring, in rural areas. Though it dates back to immigration control between states in “China”. (When they were different sovereign entities.)

They’re all migrant workers and are allowed to be in Beijing without Hukou. Hukou Just establishes certain privileges like home ownership and school access.

The best way to think about Hukou for Americans is that Hukou is like if California required a Texan or Floridian to get a Visa or become a “California Citizen” before working there, buying a home there, or using public services there.

It seems Hukou is being used to somewhat control the urbanisation plans CCP have been implementing. They create “Hukou free” regions like Shenzhen for periods of time to cause mass migration and economic growth.

But it’s also created this strange “illegal migrant” issue in all the top tier cities (PK, SH, GZ, etc).

I've been caught in Beijing traffic exactly once, and it's not something I'd ever want to deal with ever again.

I think any person who can pay to avoid it absolutely will. Chinese traffic makes American traffic seem completely smooth.

Low population density - it's the only city in China of this size with something resembling American suburbia. A lot of semi-rural, and low-rise building separating the urban core with all govt buildings from new districts.

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